Role: Dungeon Master
Having been assigned a mission by the King in the last session to investigate the whereabouts of a royal regiment send to a duchy notorious for border clashes, the players quickly find out that royal order has long ceased to exist.
The small fortified village of Lipmund was the first settlement the players encounter in the Duchy. Amongst other shops, there is a glass maker selling mirrors and a healer’s house overladen with wounded and / or strangely mutated soldiers. In return for helping her with the wounded and solving the riddle of a magic tortoise by the river to get more herbs for her, the players received a glow-potion from the healer. After they had asked around the village, the players found a spot were the regiment had set up camp. There, the players discovered a mirror as well as a situational report hinting at troubles within the regiment. Then, the players followed tracks into a nearby cave, where they stumbled upon the petrified remains of the regiment’s captain. After warding of several smaller monsters, they realise that a basilisk’s lair is ahead. They rushed back to the village and equipped themselves with mirrors. The players then set-up a trap inside the cave and petrified the basilisk.
After that, the players began reinforcing the village, as an attack seemed eminent. And soon enough, a band of marauders attacked the village, as it later turned out, for a magic artefact that came in with the mutated soldiers. The player began to lose ground after a while, when the marauders’ leader turned on his fellow attackers after he had secured the artefact from himself. The players had met the marauders’ leader before, a man with rather ambiguous morals. He and one of the player’s character’s sister were in an organisation tasked with tracking down and destroying the artefacts, whereas the marauders wanted it for their own gain.
For the session, I crafted battlemap tiles. The idea was to have different terrains to make fighting exploring more interesting, such as rivers with passages, small and large bushes, tall grass and roads. And most importantly of course, the two points of interest, the session will be focussed on: the defensive wall of the village and the basilisk’s lair in the rock formation.